In this wide-ranging
interview with human rights lawyer and former Privacy International head of
advocacy Carly Nyst, we discuss surveillance politics, radical thinking, and
human rights on the internet.

“If progressives focus too much on the
institutional sphere, the right wing can take the streets – they’ve done it before. If we don’t, someone else
will.” Interview with the author of Hope is a Promise. (5,800 words)

The Council for Europe's commissioner for human rights warns that
Europe’s new security-oriented turn restricts fundamental human rights, a
success for terrorists who want us to abandon our lifestyle and live in fear.
Short interview.

Counter-radicalisation
in France draws on British and Dutch policies developed in the mid-2000s. It extends
police action to areas of diversity management such as education, religion and
social policy. With what results? Interview.

In 2006, a conversation before a large
audience in Rotterdam on the role that Muslims should play in European
societies took place, between Dyab Abou Jahjah, then president of the Arab
European League with its Antwerp headquarters, and Tariq Ramadan. openDemocracy’s
Editor was there. Archive.

All the countries of those sitting around this table were
born in genocide. In the case of Brazil, we were the world champion of slavery.
So we are based on that! Sweet but violent. From the Squares and Beyond partnership.

On July 3-4, the LSE will
jointly host a seminar with openDemocracy on the impact of the
movements in the squares from 2011 onwards. Do they contribute to the
democratic renewal of our democracies and if so how? A conversation.

Here
are fourteen reasons for the celebration of this work of genius, beginning with
seven celebrating what Pride and Prejudice might be said to have gained
from its own historical moment, before moving to the 'feel good factor' of our
times. A Valentine's card, originally published on February 14, 2014.

How should Europe's media hold its leaders, its institutions, its decisions to account? Is it the fault of EU citizens that they don't? Is there a different role for old and new media? The oD Editor argues that new media might make the difference.

The motivation becomes artistic. You want to tell a story
like a good storyteller and then you become political again and then you become
artistic again. At least if you are hated, maybe, you are doing something
right. Interview with the filmmaker.

After a while, we begin to feel that the stream of love embraces many
people in this community - there is so much greeting and laughing, confiding
and story-telling, and dancing, including a wonderful account of waltzing into fifty years of marriage. Film review.

Three
questions are important to us. First and foremost, who is the content or
knowledge for? Which conversations is it already part of? How can the wider
audience be built for that conversation most effectively?

Nasserism, by far, is the main form of
progressive political consciousness that one can find in Egypt, when it takes the
form of nostalgia, not for military rule, but for social benefits, jobs, agrarian
reform, democratisation of education, and the national dignity of Egypt as
incarnated and embodied by Nasser. Interview: 14 February 2014.

In
this follow-up interview with leading member of the Revolutionary Socialists in
Egypt, Sameh Naguib, we talk about Al-Sisi's Egypt, the new alliance around the general, what challenges face opposition parties and movements and the future of Tahrir Square ( long interview, October 24, 2013)

World Forum for Democracy 2017

This year, the theme is ‘populism’. Is the problem fake news or fake democracy? What media, what political parties, what politicians do we need to re-connect with citizens and make informed choices in 21st century democracy?

Civil Society Futures is a national conversation about how English civil society can flourish in a fast changing world.Come and add your voice»

Full coverage of the non-hierarchical conference held in Barcelona on 18-22 June 2017.